


The Street Cat Named Belle

by Tiny_Dragongirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Fluff without Plot, Gen, Knitting, Storybrooke is just a town and Mr Gold is just a grumpy guy, all hail Pettson and Findus, cat!belle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:06:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27135661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tiny_Dragongirl/pseuds/Tiny_Dragongirl
Summary: Mr. Gold, resident Pettson of Storybrooke, gets himself a Findus. Or more like, a Belle.
Relationships: Belle & Rumplestiltskin | Mr. Gold
Kudos: 5
Collections: Kisses Bingo





	The Street Cat Named Belle

It all started with someone placing a cardboard box on Mr. Gold’s doorstep on a rainy morning.

Much to his despise, after nearly tripping over it and almost breaking his good leg, inside the box Mr. Gold found a handful of mewling fur with four thread-thin legs and an infinite amount of claws. Since all creatures great and small were equally abominable to him, he toyed with the idea of ditching the fussy kitten in Leroy’s garden. Of course, Leroy couldn’t keep an animal alive for five minutes, what, for five _seconds_ , and Mr. Gold only wished harm upon those who had crossed him.

This helpless cat certainly did no such thing. Yet.

Although during the last few weeks, since Mr. Gold made up his mind and took her to the vet instead of Leroy’s garden, Belle tried a few tricks to test the limits of his patience. When she climbed up the curtain only to fall down and he caught her at the last minute, Mr. Gold honest-to-God screamed that he would leave Belle to her fate tomorrow at first daylight.

They both knew it was an empty threat.

Naming her Belle was meant to be ironic. She was a scrawny little cat from a box; not even Mary Margaret would have called her lovely. Well, maybe Mary Margaret, but probably she would dodge the question by crouching down and cooing ‘hello, cutiepie’... or something like that. So, Belle was named Belle because she looked ugly— however, after finding shelter in a warm house with plenty of food she quickly grew into her name, becoming a fine, healthy kitten, very much alive with curiosity. She loved to play with unsupervised skeins of yarn, but even that couldn’t ruffle Gold’s feathers. Also, it helped a lot that after Belle’s first mayhem amongst the colourful balls of yarn he tried to keep them locked away when he wasn’t knitting.

Then the day came when Mr. Gold was knitting, working on a golden yellow scarf, and his peace wasn’t disturbed by tiny paws getting tangled in his yarn—until he found out why: he was petting Belle’s head instead of purling stitches. He quickly withdrew his hand.

“It’s not a— a caress. The fact that I tolerate your presence in the house doesn’t mean that I’ll coddle you,” he warned Belle. “I accidentally brushed your head, that’s all.”

But then these accidental brushes kept happening.

Well-fed and cared for, Belle’s fur became softer than baby alpaca yarn, so maybe it was no wonder that from time to time Mr. Gold mistook her for a ball of wool. One that purred and made all kinds of happy little kitten sounds, but still, an easy mistake.

“I don’t like you, dearie,” Gold said when a chilly October evening found him in a pensive state, sitting by the fire and stroking Belle. “You’re a nuisance.”

The nuisance purred happily.


End file.
